CBS5’s BLATANT ATTACK

Prolife advocates often cringe at mainstream media coverage; it’s hardly ever accurate and rarely ever fair or balanced. With our “Black & Beautiful” billboards in Oakland, CA, one station rose above the rest in their blatant advocacy for abortion–CBS 5. They’ve pulled the first video below from their website after I tweeted (@lifehaspurpose) the following:

They tweeted, in response:

Here’s the “news” piece from CBS5 that was yanked after my tweet above:

Sadly, it doesn’t end there. There was a second “news” piece produced by CBS5 and their (apparently pro-abortion) reporter Robert Lyles. The defamatory coverage is so blatantly biased and untrue, I had to write to the station to criticize their violation of the public’s trust:

Below is the email that was positively responded to by the VP of News Operations at the station who is awaiting a response from the reporter and his supervisor as to the excessively false content in the piece:

Dear CBS5,

Your recent broadcast of our “Black & Beautiful” campaign should have been labeled as an Editorial as it was clearly an attempt to defame and demonize The Radiance Foundation and our effort to raise awareness about the epidemic of abortion in the black community and advocate life-affirming options such as adoption.

Objective journalism obviously is an anomaly these days. Reporter Robert Lyles’ piece on our “Black & Beautiful” billboard campaign was the most blatantly biased and dishonest local tv news piece we’ve seen to date. Of course Lyles never mentioned the prolife/pro-adoption themed campaign was created by a black individual (who is an adoptee and an adoptive father) nor the national coalition of African-Americans who’ve championed it since its inception in early 2010. That would require some legwork, like actually going to the website, TooManyAborted.com, or contacting The Radiance Foundation, which Lyles never bothered to do. Here is some copy from your “Black & Beautiful” coverage that illuminates the shameful reporting:

>>>”And some say…it’s a little racist…”You mean the pro-abortion critics who you’ve conveniently not supered [identified and named] in the piece, namely the first activist soundbite? Alicia Walters (Trust Black Women Partnership) was supered in other interviews (other stations). Their national strategy is to call any campaign that illuminates the disproportionate impact on abortion, racist.

>>>What were these “racist tactics”?

Declaring that black children are beautiful and too many are aborted? Didn’t CBS5 think that charges of racism should be handled responsibly? A call to The Radiance Foundation would have confirmed that this is an African-American led effort. But the charge of racism is easy and lazy.

>>>”And slight changes to that website address have popped up in other U.S. cities…”

This is just a flat-out lie. The website, TooManyAborted.com, is the same on EVERY billboard that we’ve launched. Lyles deliberately and falsely attaches our campaign to a completely different effort through Heroic Media (www.thatsabortion.com). They’re not related to The Radiance Foundation in any way.

>>>“Critics say b/c of outrage back east, the message has switched from comparing black fetuses to slaves to the kinder gentler message of black and beautiful.”Could this be any lazier or untrue? Our “Juneteenth” campaign, launched in Atlanta at the same time as our Oakland campaign, hasn’t caused outrage to switch our message, which does NOT compare black unborn children to slaves. Our “Juneteenth” campaign shows how inextricably tied abortion and slavery are, mainly through the consistent thread of eugenics. The reporter would know this by doing any actual research. www.toomanyaborted.com/juneteenth.

Our first “Black and Beautiful” billboards went up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2010 a year before this Oakland campaign. We haven’t “softened” our message. We continue to tell the same message that there are Too Many Aborted, by addressing different aspects of the abortion issue.

>>>”The ads are backed by a Southern Christian group called Radiance.”

We’re not a “southern group”, and our full name is on the billboard: The Radiance Foundation. We assume that “Christian” was added in there to be derogatory [to bolster the narrative that ‘Christian’ is somehow synonymous with ‘racist’]

>>>NONE of our billboards have ever been taken down. We’ve placed hundreds of billboards throughout the country and not a single one has been removed. Our website contains irrefutable federal stats and historical documentation, endorsed by African-American leaders nationwide. This is why our campaigns have not been removed by those who are clearly anti-free speech.

We find it disgraceful that Robert Lyles and CBS5 would allow such deliberately false reporting. I think we can all agree that the role of the news media is to present the facts, and allow people to decide for themselves. CBS5′ reporting failed miserably in both broadcasts and was simply irresponsible.

Sincerely,

Ryan Bomberger
Chief Creative Officer
The Radiance Foundation

Comments

Christiana

August 20, 2011

I really want to watch the footage, but the vids are saying “private”. Journalists get away with broadcasting deception daily. I’m so glad you responded to the reporter’s lies.

Darrell Roberts

September 6, 2011

Way to go! Truth is truth. Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Your letter to CBS5 was done very professionally and addressed the facts. Better than their reporter!